Let’s face it, at most organizations, employees and managers use the performance management system at the beginning of the year to set goals and to establish development plans - and do not return to the system until they are required by HR to enter performance evaluations and make compensation decisions. When they do have to return to the “system”, they view their effort as an arduous, compliance-driven task rather than a business process to support a high performance culture. Moreover, in our Essential Guide to Performance Systems we found that three out of four managers “do not feel their performance management system helps them do their job better”.
The problem is that the majority of performance management systems implemented today were designed as automation tools for HR practitioners to collect information and not to support the business user. As a result, these systems are highly transactional, cumbersome, and just plain unintuitive. More importantly, they ask a lot of the business user and don’t give them much of any “value” in return. More than half of managers (from the same study) see performance management as an event, not a continuous process or set of management practices to align and engage employees.
If we really want support a high performance culture by encouraging employees and managers to embed performance management practices into their daily work life (i.e., updating goal progress, logging feedback and tracking development), the enabling technology must help them understand what they have to do and get them to want to do it. We must engage them.
One solution provider shaking it up and offering an innovative approach to performance management systems is New Zealand-based Sonar6. Sonar6 offers an almost entirely graphics-based application that is very simple and engaging for business users. I had the opportunity to get an update today from Sonar6 on their Version 3 release (which is in beta now and will be generally available at the end of March). There is really nothing like it out on the market today, particularly for organizations in their target market (200 – 2500 employees).
It is fun, yes I admit it. You get to push lots of colorful buttons and slide little gummy people around. But more importantly, the application was designed to engage managers and employees by providing relevant information to support every decision they make. Some of this valuable “information” - such as history and trend data - is of course only collected over time and does not magically appear during the initial implementation. The point is the application was designed to leverage this information in meaningful ways in the user experience, rather than trapping it in a reporting tool for HR practitioners.
Does your performance management system engage your employees and managers?
We will be featuring more innovative solution providers during the Innovation Showcase at our IMPACT 2009: The Business of Talent® conference in St. Petersburg Florida - April 14-16 2009. Please join us.